Lampard and the glazed expression of confused impotence at Everton

We’ll be honest with you: The Fiver went big on the struggles of Everton last week because we thought we’d get our trademark cheap digs in while the going was good. After all, they’d surely pick up six points from their matches in the Goodison cauldron against Wolves and Newcastle, whereupon any notions of impending relegation would become fanciful and the chance to riff, bebop and scat on Frank Lampard’s pain would be gone. The mental gymnastics we have to perform, eh, readers? We go to these extra lengths just for you. You deserve it. Nil Satis Nisi Optimum, right?

However, as we watched the blood drain from Lampard’s face yesterday afternoon, supporters segueing seamlessly from supportive cheering to booing to a crisp, clear snatch of You’re Not Fit To Wear The Shirt, we began to wonder if the unthinkable was starting to occur in plain sight in front of our very eyes. We’ve seen that grey, glazed expression of confused impotence on Merseyside before – Mike Walker, Roy Hodgson, Jimmy Corkhill – and it rarely ends well. The miserable 1-0 defeat to Wolves means the Ev are now only out of the relegation places on goal difference, with rejuvenated 18th-placed Watford breathing down their necks, and the aforementioned Hodgson, merely by adding a pair of wire spectacles, now transformed into a windswept romantic with a vague similarity to late-era WB Yeats. A terrible beauty is born.

Lampard, in one of those excruciating Fronting Up post-match interviews, insisted that “we have belief” and that his team will “keep fighting for it”. That’s the sort of tough talk that used to work so well at peak-Jose Chelsea – Claude Makélélé, John Terry, all that – but doesn’t land so firmly when you’re relying on Dele Alli and Jarrad